Find out what's happening behind the scenes in the organisation that maintains Scotland's land and property registers.

Completing Scotland’s land register

This blog post is by Charles Keegan, Head of land register completion, Registers of Scotland

Charles Keegan is head of land register completion at Registers of Scotland (RoS). His team are working to fulfil the request by Scottish ministers for RoS to complete the land register by 2019 for land and property owned by public bodies, and by 2024 for private and third sector landowners.

Completing the land register by 2024 is a challenging target, but I believe it’s achievable. My team are working across Scotland to meet landowners in the public and private sectors to promote the benefits of voluntarily registering titles and support applicants in bringing their titles onto the land register.

A single, comprehensive, publicly searchable register that gives clarity on who owns what will be a national asset for Scotland. Going forward it will make transactions on land and property faster, easier and cheaper as all land will be recorded on the digital map-based register.

Voluntary registration is one of the main ways we can speed up the completion process, and RoS has reduced fees for voluntary applications by 25 per cent until 2017 to encourage land and property owners to update their land records and add them to the land register, providing a state-backed guarantee of title for greater security of assets.